If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

As expected, Barack Obama’s 70 minute State of the Union addressfocused heavily on the economy and the domestic political agenda. This was hardly surprising in the aftermath of last week’s catastrophic defeat for his party in the Massachusetts special Senate election, where the Republicans scored an historic victory. American voters are turning strongly against the president’s health care reform package as well as his big government vision for the economy, which has contributed to spiraling public debt and mounting unemployment, now standing at over 10 percent.

But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.

Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.

The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address.

Obama’s world leadership in his first year in office has been weak-kneed and little short of disastrous. He has sacrificed the projection of American power upon the altar of political vanity, with empty speeches and groveling apologies across the world, from Strasbourg to Cairo. He has appeased some of America’s worst enemies, and has extended the hand of friendship to many of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth. Judging by the State of the Union address tonight, we can expect more of the same from an American president who seems determined to lead the world’s greatest power along a path of decline.

When the one you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.

Sorry I can't accomadate your yearning for an International view to your liking. However, here's another point of view from 'this side of the pond', that sounds eerily similar.

Amazing how many heard the speech in the same pathetic drone it was delivered, and carrying the same message of someone and his party so void of reason, it's difficult how you could have missed it.

UB

Obama's Speech Confounds

Thursday, 28 Jan 2010 02:43 PM

By: George Will

Barack Obama tiptoed Wednesday night along the seam that bifurcates the Democratic Party's brain. The seam separates that brain's John Quincy Adams lobe from its Sigmund Freud lobe.

The dominant liberal lobe favors Adams' dictum that politicians should not be "palsied by the will of our constituents." It exhorts Democrats to smack Americans with what is good for them — healthcare reform, carbon rationing, etc. — even if the dimwits do not desire it.

Obama was mostly in Adams' mode Wednesday. His nods to reality were, however, notable.

Such speeches must be listened to with a third ear that hears what is not said. Unmentioned was organized labor's "card-check" legislation to abolish workers' rights to secret ballots in unionization elections.

Obama's perfunctory request for a "climate bill" — the term "cap and trade" was as absent as the noun "Guantanamo" — was not commensurate with his certitude that life on earth may drown in rising seas.

On Feb. 24, when unemployment was 8.2 percent, Obama said in the second sentence of his speech to Congress that the economy "is a concern that rises above all others" and later that his agenda "begins with jobs."

After 11 months of healthcare monomania, he said Wednesday that "jobs must be our number one focus." Unemployment is 10 percent.

He called Wednesday for a third stimulus (the first was his predecessor's, in February 2008) although the S-word has been banished in favor of "jobs bill."

It will inject into the economy money that government siphons from the economy, thereby somehow creating jobs. And you thought alchemy was strange.

Not until the 33rd minute of Wednesday's 70-minute address did Obama mention healthcare. The weirdness of what he said made it worth the wait.

Acknowledging that the longer the public has looked at the legislation, the less the public has liked it, he blamed himself for not "explaining it more clearly." But his faux contrition actually blames the public: The problem is not the legislation's substance but the presentation of it to slow learners.

He urged them to take "another look at the plan we've proposed." The plan? The differences between the House and Senate plans are not trivial; they concern how to pay for the enormous new entitlement.

On Feb. 24, with a grandiosity with which the nation has become wearily familiar, he said, "Already, we have done more to advance the cause of healthcare reform in the last 30 days than we have in the last decade."

He was referring to the expansion of eligibility to an existing entitlement:
the State Children's Health Insurance Program. But that expansion was minor compared with the enormous new Medicare entitlement for prescription drugs created under Obama's predecessor.

Before the Massachusetts nuisance, this year's speech was to be a self-coronation of the "last" president to deal with healthcare.

On Feb. 24, he said he had an activist agenda because of the recession, "not because I believe in bigger government — I don't."

Ninety-seven days later, he bought General Motors.

Wednesday night's debut of Obama as avenging angel of populism featured one of those opaque phrases, the "weight of our politics," that third-rate speechwriters slip past drowsy editors.

Obama seems to regret the existence in Washington of . . . everyone else. He seems to feel entitled to have his way without tiresome interventions in the political process by the many interests affected by his agenda for radical expansion of the regulatory state.

Speaking of slow learners, liberals do not notice the connection between expansion of government and expansion of (often defensive) activities referred to under the rubric of "lobbying."

Lamenting Washington's "deficit of trust," Obama gave an example of the reason for it when he brassily declared: "We are prepared to freeze government spending for three years."

This flagrant falsehood enlarges Washington's deficit of truth: He proposes freezing some discretionary spending, about one-eighth of government spending.

Well, Bill if you only cite the opinions of conservatives, what point of view would you expect? The Telegraph is a well known conservative publication in the U.K., and everyone knows where George Will stands.

Well, Bill if you only cite the opinions of conservatives, what point of view would you expect? The Telegraph is a well known conservative publication in the U.K., and everyone knows where George Will stands.

This, of course, would be your "INDEPENDANT" view! You can't even be honest with yourself. How does that phoneyness work for you?

I've never met an independant yet that had any principled philosophy. Most were sheeple, blowing in the wind, and following whatever fad they liked that day.

Someone far smater than I coined a phrase that stated: "If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything." I suspect many 'independants' got conned into the Obama camp for that very reason.

UB

When the one you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.

This, of course, would be your "INDEPENDANT" view! You can't even be honest with yourself. How does that phoneyness work for you?

I've never met an independant yet that had any principled philosophy. Most were sheeple, blowing in the wind, and following whatever fad they liked that day.

Someone far smater than I coined a phrase that stated: "If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything." I suspect many 'independants' got conned into the Obama camp for that very reason.

UB

Well, at least I’m willing to pull off the blinders long enough to consider an alternative point of view. You only seem to have the ability to see one point of view, and you assume it must always be correct because it agrees with yours. If I was mistaken about the political positions of either the Telegraph or George Will, please correct me.

Huh. If you don't fit into the Republican or Democratic fold, that means that you're unprincipled and stand for nothing?

Ok...

No, no, no, no.

If you are an independent, you are unprincipled.

If you are a Democrat (better known as socialists), you are crooked.

If you are a RINO, you are actually evil since you had the chance to know the truth but turned your back.

If you are conservative, you obviously have a brain, but your thinking is probably still a little fuzzy unless you are very far to the right.

Of course, RINOS, independents and Dems can always claim some exemption based on congenital stupidity and their "Sheeple" nature that leads them to follow false prophets on a regular basis. If you are prepared to confess the errors of your ways and agree to vote a straight conservative line in the future, you graduate from your role as a member of the Sheeple to the ranks of patriots.

And remember, democracy is too important to be left in the hands of the people, for they are gullible and know not what they do.

...And remember, democracy is too important to be left in the hands of the people, for they are gullible and know not what they do.

A mainstream left wing democrat tenent.

subroc

Article [I.]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Article [II.]
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.